Author: Dave

Kees Hein Woldendorp passed along the announcement for a conference an international congress about ‘rehabilitation and music’ at Revalidatie Friesland, the Netherlands on April 24, 2019. He will be defending his PhD thesis, “Musculoskeletal complaints and dysfunction in musicians,” there. There will be some presentations about brass embouchures there. Here’s the announcement.

1959 was arguably the most creative year in all of jazz history. Bird had already passed away, and this year would see the passings of Lester Young and Billie Holiday. Musically speaking, when we read jazz history texts or see the labels among the many diverse styles of jazz (i.e “Free Jazz,” “Modal Jazz,” “Third Stream,” etc…), we tend to separate these different styles into alternate universes. In fact, many of the contributions we now consider to be jazz “classics” all happened around the same time.

There were so many great records and performances that happened in 1959. Here’s a neat web site that posts a snapshot of jazz from 60 years ago with new photos posted every day. It’s called the 1959 Project.

Time that I might usually spend doing a little blogging here has been taken up with other projects, including something that is related to a recent topic started on Trombone Chat forum, Embouchure mechanics certificates?

The beginning of the thread discusses the broader topic of degrees or certifications as a measure of the breadth and expertise of the holder. Where I find it gets more interesting is when it spins off into a discussion of brass embouchure pedagogy.

As I alluded to above, I’m currently putting together something related to embouchure pedagogy that I’ll be posting here when complete, but it’s a pretty extensive project and I want to have it complete (or complete enough) before it goes live. I will say this, there will be very little in it that can’t already be found if you poke around through all my blog posts, but the presentation and organization will be a bit different from how I’ve done this before.

North Carolina got hit with a blizzard overnight and it’s expected to continue snowing through tomorrow. Since I’m fortunate to not have lost power (yet), I’ve been putting the finishing touches up on a big band arrangement of “The First Noel.” Here is a MIDI demo of it.

If you’re curious, I do most of my composing/arranging directly into Finale and the above playback file is Finale’s playback. For the rhythm section parts I create a Band-in-a-Box MIDI file and open it up with Finale, then copy and paste the parts I want into my big band score. That gives me a quick and easy rhythm section playback.

It takes too long to fix all the weird import errors when I try to import a Band-in-a-Box solo into Finale and since the chart will soon be played by real musicians I didn’t worry about plugging in solos in the demo. There are three soloists. The first 16 bars is alto sax, followed by 8 of trombone and 8 of trumpet.

This tune was interesting to work with and arrange. It’s an unusual tune, the same phrase repeats and then a refrain follows that is very similar to the original phrase. Creating a swinging big band arrangement of that form presented some challenges. Because each of the three phrases in the “tune” are so similar, it would quickly become repetitive to have every phrase of the chart be based on the same phrase. I broke up that pattern in four different ways. First, I changed up the reharmonization for the refrain (third) phrase. I also wrote a new 8 bar section to use as an intro, interlude, and coda. During the solos section I inserted a bridge based on the bridge to “Frosty the Snowman.” Lastly, I modulate to new keys, on the shout chorus every phrase.

I found the discussion about the double pipe tuning particularly interesting. The construction of each pipe is such that they aren’t fully chromatic. By tuning each pipe a half step apart the piper is able to play a melodic line that would not be possible otherwise.

I wasn’t familiar with Jeremy Wilson’s playing or teaching prior to coming across his YouTube channel. He’s got a few performance videos on there as well as some videos where he discusses his philosophy of music practice and performance. There’s some really excellent and inspiring things there, you should explore it. All of the videos I watched were well produced too.

One of the videos I enjoyed very much was his performance of a piece called Tresin Terra, by David M. Rodgers. Wilson’s performance is amazing. His tone is consistent and beautiful across the entire range. His playing is not only technically impressive but also very expressive. The composition is also very cool. I was watching the video trying to look for Wilson’s embouchure type, but I kept getting lost in the music. Take a look and see if, like me, you had to go back to guess Jeremy Wilson’s embouchure type. I will put my guess under the break.

As Doug notes in the forum thread, traditional brass pedagogy has been dominated by Arnold Jacobs’s approach. In this approach you actively avoid working on the embouchure. In essence most brass students are taught to breathe well and focus on the end product. You should ignore the embouchure.

And that’s why brass embouchure research is so rare and generally unknown outside of a few. Fortunately I was encouraged to explore this topic for my graduate research. I know graduate students who were actively discouraged from doing any sort of pedagogy research on brass embouchures because it wasn’t appropriate or worth doing.

What does the latest research say about teaching brass embouchures? I just scanned through an academic library searching for “(embouchure) AND (pedagogy)” for publications that have come out in the past 5 years. I found just 6 relevant hits.

The Effect of a Researcher Composed Mouthpiece Buzzing Routine on the Intonation and Tone Quality of Beginning Band Brass StudentsBeghtol, Jason. The University of Mississippi, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017. 10746240.

No mention of embouchure types that I noticed. (The abstract notes, “Results suggest the inclusion of a daily mouthpiece buzzing routine does not have a significant effect on beginning band brass students’ intonation or tone quality.”)

OPTIMIZATION OF THE BRASS PLAYING BREATHING PROCESS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF NATURAL BREATHINGBardins, Sandis; Marnauza, Mara. Problems in Music Pedagogy; Daugavpils Vol. 13, Iss. 1/2, (2014): 97-110.

This one mentioned embouchure twice. The author’s point in both of those sentences is that breathing is important to a well functioning embouchure.

This leads to creating an unnecessary tension and stress in the body, because the natural inspiratory reflex (so-called Herring-Breuer reflex) is not implemented (White, 2005), and also contributes to the expiratory muscle fatigue and rapid decrease of the physical endurance – general for the body, because the body is not supplied with oxygen, as well as embouchure, which receives a reduced amount of air for creation of a sound and has to compensate it by pressing the mouthpiece against the lips.

—

This approach to mastering breathing patterns in wind instrument playing has several advantages:

3. a more stable air flow which relieves work of the embouchure, thus increasing its endurance and working limits in ultimate registers.

This article pretty much represents mainstream brass pedagogy. Fix the breathing and embouchure will do fine, no need to learn about how embouchure works.

I actually can’t find this full text online, so I don’t know what it says about embouchure. It could be relevant and I’m curious because I’d like to see how horn pedagogy has evolved (or not). Horn pedagogy seems to have its own quirks that you don’t see in other brass teaching.

This article is not scientific at all and is based on the author’s personal experience both having braces and teaching students with braces. I don’t think the advice in there isn’t bad, per se, but it is very incomplete. I’ve seen a lot in the literature that’s like this, one teacher or player’s anecdotes are described, but rarely subjected to any testing.

The only reason this came up in my search was because the term “embouchure” was in one of the citations (Fletcher, S. (2008). The effect of focal task-specific embouchure dystonia upon brass musicians: A literature review and case study. Doctoral Dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.). Here’s the specific citation.

From this perspective, it has been easier to discuss, disseminate, and perhaps even implement the comparatively clearer assertions of more behaviorist-leaning teachers; therefore, despite enthusiastic support for Jacob’s ideas, the dialogue on teaching within our field often continues to target task-oriented concepts. (Fletcher, 2008; Marston, 2011)

I’ve read both Fletcher’s and Marston’s dissertations (she cites her own dissertation a lot in this article). I think her criticism of “task-oriented concepts” are off base. The criticism that so much of this type of teaching is contradictory is, to me, evidence that a model, such as Donald Reinhardt’s and Doug Elliott’s embouchure type approaches need to be better understood in order to evaluate and compare different pedagogical practices. If you aren’t analyzing things correctly, you’re not going to teach the right task oriented concepts in the first place. Sure, it’s a lot easier to focus on product over process and get an immediate benefit. But if you’re going to truly compare task-oriented versus product oriented pedagogy you should at least learn how to do both right.

And again, I have to make the point that it’s valuable for teachers to understand the process too, even if they minimize their discussion of the mechanics of brass playing with their students. The whole point of Marston’s article is to teach brass technique by emphasizing the end goal, and while acknowledging that there are smaller steps to reach that goal, at no point does she make any mention to what good brass technique is other than to mention breathing.

And Marston’s impressions that task-oriented teaching is dominant today seems off to me. If the 6 papers and articles I found today are representative, Song & Wind is getting more attention.

This last one is a case study of one student’s preparation for a demanding performance. The embouchure references in here seem to be mainly related to specific exercises the author found particularly helpful in preparing to perform, but an awful lot of those embouchure exercises reference air flow as the key. While I don’t want to minimize the role that good breathing plays for successful brass playing, it does represent mainstream brass pedagogy’s approach that the only thing that is important for embouchure is to have good breathing.

So there you have it, for what it’s worth. Bear in mind that this was a cursory search and there are probably some hidden gems that I didn’t come across. I also intentionally kept the search terms narrow and eliminated hits that weren’t relevant (anything related to woodwind for example and historical papers). Of the 6, three emphasized breathing as the key for embouchure technique. One article was based purely on anecdotes, so the information should be taken with a grain of salt. Only one made any attempt at scientific inquiry and subjecting pedagogical ideas to a test.

Point of clarification update – there are definitely more than these out there, probably a lot more, it was just what happened to be accessible through one college library web site. My interest in using these six was to use it as a snapshot for what current research happens to be out there on brass embouchure pedagogy.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a video demonstration by physicist Richard Smith where he shows how air doesn’t need to travel through a brass instrument in order for the normal acoustics of the instrument to work. While I find the science behind it and the creative thinking he used to create the demonstration interesting, what I’m most curious about is the discussion is sparked on the pedagogy forum where I first came across this video. If you didn’t see this video, here it is again.

I mentioned in my previous post that I found some of the comments disappointing and surprising. I made a couple of responses in the pedagogy forum that I wanted to share here for other folks who are concerned about “practical applications” of taking the time to learn this information.

The only legitimate criticism I’ve seen in this thread is that the title of the video is somewhat misleading, although I think it’s still technically true. All we really need to get a brass instrument to resonate is an oscillator, it doesn’t need to be lips excited by air being blown past them.

But for those of you who are being snarky, dismissive, or downright degrading Dr. Smith’s video demonstration because you don’t see an immediate application to trombone pedagogy, here are a few things I’d like to offer as food for thought.

In North Carolina, where I live, the public school’s guidelines for music standards are broken into three parts: Musical Literacy, Musical Response, and Contextual Relevancy. These are then further broken down into more detailed standards, one of which states, “Understand global, interdisciplinary, and 21st century connections with music.” Other states likely have similar education standards. In my opinion, this is a good goal to have. Music is not created and learned in a vacuum. It’s important to learn how music relates to history, sociology, and yes, science.

I think we all agree that modeling to our students is an important and effective way to communicate musical instructions. Most of us probably play for our students and recommend listening to quality performances. You might also consider that you’re not just modeling music, but also attitude. Even if you only teach private lessons, when you openly dismiss a science demonstration that describes the way a brass instrument actually works you’re effectively undermining that student’s band director’s attempts to make an interdisciplinary connection with music. You’re modeling that science isn’t relevant to music and discouraging science literacy. And you might consider that many of the members of this Facebook group are students and future music educators. What attitude should the experienced teachers here be modeling to them?

Unless you’re teaching at a conservatory, and even if you do, your students are likely going to have to make a connection with science and music at some point in their life. The video demonstration (and the technical paper) may not seem directly relevant to the lessons you’re teaching now, but when that student asks for your advice about, for example, a presentation she has to give for another class and how she might incorporate her love for trombone into that discipline, you now have a resource you can recommend.

It’s impossible to predict what’s going to get all your students excited about trombone. Many students might really connect with this video and that could potentially help you in your lessons. And if you’re thinking that this is only good for students with an analytical learning style you need to consider that “learning styles” are mostly just “learning preferences” and teaching to a student’s preferences don’t usually lead to better outcomes. If a student is resistant to analytical thinking, it’s probable that it’s exposing a weakness that should be improved, not avoided.

While I’m not a scientist, I am a science fan. Learning more about the way the world actually works is cool. Like music, I find science intrinsically rewarding on its own without requiring any direct relevance to something else. But when the science happens to relate to music, even superficially, that makes it even more interesting to me. I’m sure I’m not alone with this, and you might have some students who feel similarly.

f you’re concerned about the content of this video not being “practical,” it’s arguably more practical in the 21st century to teach scientific literacy than to teach how to make fart sounds through a metal tube. Hyperbole aside, one immediate practical benefit can be found right here. It’s prompted an interesting discussion about why we tend to teach through analogy and visualization. This has spun off somewhat to a discussion of how such instructions can be taken to the extreme and how and why to pull things back. This is a good conversation for teachers to have.

Do you need to stop everything in your weekly lessons to show your students this video? Of course not, but the information contained are worth filing away for the future. Here’s another practical application. Your hypothetical student arrives to his or her lesson with a large pimple on the lip right where the mouthpiece rim is placed. You have 30-60 minutes to fill. I’m sure you could think about lots of ways to fill this time with “practical” information, but some students will get really jazzed about stuff like this. Even students who might not be immediately receptive to science might take this idea and run with it later. It’s hard to predict the downstream effects of improving our understanding of the way the world works. Maybe that student takes the membrane mouthpiece device shown in this video, combines it with a piece of technology yet to be developed, and then writes a graduate thesis that has a direct effect on brass pedagogy.

Furthermore, I think brass pedagogy could stand a little more of the scientific method and critical thinking. One thing we learn from this video is that our intuitions about the way our instruments really work aren’t always accurate. That’s definitely practical knowledge to have.

Sarah Paradis is the trombonist with the Mirari Brass Quintet. I was able to watch them give a masterclass a number of years ago which was wonderful. Sarah recently had a son (congratulations, Sarah!), but some complications forced her to take a long time off from the trombone. She’s doing well now and is back to playing trombone and blogging about her experience taking such a long time off and what it’s going to take for her comeback.

Mentally, I didn’t mind too much about this break because I knew it was something I had to do for my health and especially for the health of my baby. It hurt my ego a bit because I couldn’t play with Mirari Brass Quintet, I couldn’t take any gigs, and I missed out on an audition for my local symphony. But again, my family’s health is more important than any gig, so it was clear what I had to do.

In this first of what I hope are several posts, Sarah writes a bit about the circumstances that required her to take time off of the horn, what it was like to teach lessons without being able to play, and her plan for further posts on this topic. I’m looking forward to reading more about her experiences and what we can all learn from her. Check back later on the Brass Blog for updates.

Back when I taught at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado I used to go hiking around the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s an interesting area, right next to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the San Luis Valley. The sand dunes are formed by wind, rather than water. The area was also the home to Native Americans from at least 5,000 years ago. Stone tools discovered by archeologists decades ago were perplexing because while they were clearly made by humans, they didn’t have the correct wear marks on them to indicate that they were used as tools for grinding.

Enter archeologist, Marilyn Armagast Martorano. She spent years examining these rocks without coming up with a good explanation. Then someone sent her a video showing lithographs, musical stones. It dawned on Martorano that the stone tools might actually be musical instruments. As it happens, she was probably right.